We interrupt this broadcast to explain something to everybody who has ever used the expression “a homo sapien”. Sapiens is not a plural. It is an adjective ending in an S, just like erectus, afarensis and neanderthalensis. (It means “wise”.) You would never say “a homo erectu”, right? Don’t try to learn Latin from Del tha Funkee Homosapien.

Eventually these misconceptions get accepted through general use, which is one of several reasons why we no longer speak Latin/Old North Germanic. I don’t think you can hold the line on datum/data any more, and I suspect that die/dice will go the same way in my lifetime. Homo sapiens, though, is a formal term which can’t be varied without screwing up all the rules of taxonomy. So no way.

This is an example of “back-formation”, a process that has been going on since time immemorial. Not that that means that we should encourage it! It explains why, in English, it’s a cherry rather than a cherrise and a pea rather than a pease, for instance. My own disfavorite example these days is “kudo”.

I did a study of small children acquiring English as their 1st language. You would really get a kick out of all the wondrous inventions they come up with! One little girl came up to me (age 4) to ask, “What when we are not scared?” I answered, “Brave.” She then announced, “I am not scared of things any more. I am brave of them.” Oy!
How about the comedian who calls people up on the phone and tells them their son has been tested and discovered to be a HOMO (Loud voice)…sapiens (quiet voice). They go to pieces (on the air) and insist, “Oh no he’s not! He likes girls, he plays football…” (thinking he meant homosexual).
So, now that we have that straight, how are you at Greek? If the fellow who sails in a “naus” is a “nautes”, then is the fellow who rows with a “plate” a “plates” ? Sorry, I don’t have a Greek font, but those are long “e”s, not the ones that look like a backward “3”.

By the way, Martin, while you’re at it – why not inform people that only the genus is capitalised, whereas the species epithet is never capitalised? Ok so it’s a minor quibble but given that nomenclature and naming conventions are so easy to look up I really don’t get why even science journalists get this one wrong… /flail

If we get really fussy, sapiens is NOT an adjective ending in s. The s is actually the nominative singular case ending. Sapiens really ends in t, but the t is deleted preceding the s. Compare the nominative singular sapiens with the genitive singular sapient-is, the accusative singular sapient-em, the nominative plural sapient-es, etc. Regrettably, few English speakers use the full set of Latin case forms. But one could: “Joe is a homo sapiens.” but “Behind me, I glimpsed a hominem sapientem.”

Oh, hey, I actually know the difference between hominiDs and hominiNs. The first ones, hominDs, are all our ancestors, you see. That term arose when all the paleoarcheologists thought our human family tree was like the River Nile, just running straight back, with no branches. Later, they discovered all those Australopithecus this, that, and the other, and realized they couldn’t all be our direct ancestors. So they decided they needed a term for human-like-possible-ancestors-but-not-necessarily. That’s where the hominiNs came in. Personally, I think we could have simply redefined the original word and saved ourselves the bother, but they didn’t ask me. They never do! Very narrow-minded of them, isn’t it? (By the by, I have a degree in this area).

The site is currently under maintenance. New comments have been disabled during this time, please check back soon.